Whoever told you you can sample five seconds of a song and not have to get clearance is conflating that with one of two legal concepts the first being fair use and the second being incidental use Incident use is easy if I’m doing a documentary and that guy drives by blasting a song out of his window I don’t have to pay for it. I don’t think there’s a magic number It’s more like a common sense kind of thing if you’re trying to do something sneaky, who you are Fair use that’s a little more nuanced. The idea here is if you’re discussing a thing You should be able to talk about the thing without having to pay for the thing Let’s say I’m doing a piece about Bill Evans’s piano intro on kind of blue I should be able to use that without having to pay for it again.
The idea is that I’m using it for an illustrative example There’s no magic number if I try and do some funny business I’m gonna get dinged for it But whether or not is for financial gain or if I only use a tiny little piece If I take somebody else’s intellectual property, it’s copyright infringement.
